What Stephen Miller's rise in the White House means for Minnesota's Somali community

Carson Hartzog, Star Tribune on Nov 8, 2026

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President Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Stephen Miller, has long focused on Minnesota and the state’s Somali community.

Miller, who most recently was the White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy and the homeland security adviser, has blamed immigration for making Minneapolis unsafe, disparaged Somali refugees as pirates and accused Minnesota’s Democratic leaders of enabling widespread fraud. His promotion to chief of staff puts a leader of the administration’s immigration crackdown in charge of Trump’s broader policy agenda.

Trump announced Friday that Miller would replace Susie Wiles as chief of staff. Now, new reporting details how Miller has turned his rhetoric about Minnesota and the Somali community into federal action.

The conversation: The Washington Sun reported Friday that Miller has repeatedly pressed federal officials to scrutinize Minnesota’s Somali community.

During a December 2025 call, Miller pressed administration officials for evidence of fraud involving immigrants, Minnesota and the state’s Somali population nine times in about 10 minutes, according to reporting by the Sun.

When an official described an active criminal investigation into a national fraud case out of Virginia, Miller steered the discussion back to Minnesota.

“I hear you, but that’s a long way off from Minneapolis,” he allegedly said, according to the Sun’s reporting.

The newspaper reported that Miller’s Minnesota-focused directives reached at least five federal agencies, touching public benefits, health services and overseas money transfers.

The backstory: Miller’s professional ties to Minnesota began nearly two decades ago, when he became press secretary for Michele Bachmann, a Republican who was then a U.S. representative for Minnesota.

After an undocumented immigrant caused a school bus crash near Cottonwood, Minn., that killed four children in 2008, Miller urged Bachmann to appear on television, according to a 2020 New Yorker profile. Bachmann portrayed the crash on Fox News as a clash between “anarchy and the rule of law.”

Miller later joined Trump’s 2016 campaign and served in his first administration as senior adviser.

Minnesota again became a recurring target for Miller after Kamala Harris selected Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in 2024. Miller said their policies would “turn the entire Midwest into Mogadishu,” the capital of Somalia.

Miller has repeatedly used Minnesota’s fraud cases to argue for broader immigration restrictions, extending his criticism beyond people charged with crimes to the Somali community as a whole.

In a December 2025 Fox News interview, he accused the Somali community of “massive, endemic, systematic fraud.” He also claimed that virtually every Somali household with children received federal welfare benefits.

A week later, Miller described piracy as Somalis’ primary occupation and said “the pirates have stolen all of our money, and they have to go home.”

In another December interview, Miller alleged that Somali immigrants and their descendants had persistently high rates of welfare use, criminal activity and had failed to assimilate.

Miller continued that rhetoric this year. At a March fraud task force meeting, he contrasted a hypothetical working-class Minnesotan struggling to support his family with a Somali refugee neighbor who owned a Mercedes and received what Miller called “unlimited free money forever, for life.”

In October, he described a hypothetical Somali immigrant collecting millions for a fake daycare and spending the money on luxury cars, housing and first-class flights. Miller portrayed working Americans as paying for that lifestyle. Miller was joined by conservative influencer Nick Shirley, who posted a video late last year accusing Somali daycare owners of defrauding the state.

“They buy a Mercedes, they buy BMWs, they buy a mansion, they buy a nice house, all their kids fly first-class all over the world,” he said. “They are living the high life while you, the American citizen who’s worked your entire life and done it the right way, you paid every parking ticket you ever had, are funding that lifestyle.”

What’s next: Miller is scheduled to take over from Wiles on Monday, expanding his responsibilities beyond his current roles.

The promotion puts an architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown in charge of White House staff, giving him a broader role as the administration faces the prospect of congressional investigations.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said in a video posted to X that Miller “was kind of already running the White House in so many ways, so you can expect more of the same from the White House that you were probably already pissed off and frustrated about.”

With Democrats preparing to take control of Congress, potential subjects of scrutiny include Miller’s role in the administration’s immigration polices and the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alexi Pretti by federal immigration agents during Operation Metro Surge.

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